Walmart, CVS, others boycott Apple Pay

Think about what they’re doing.” wrote Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on Saturday. “They’re turning off NFC payment systems — the whole thing — only because people were actually using them with Apple Pay. Apple Pay works so well that it even works with non-partner systems. These things have been installed for years and so few people used them, apparently, that these retailers would rather block everyone than allow Apple Pay to continue working.”

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“I don’t know that CVS and Rite Aid disabling Apple Pay out of spite is going to drive customers to switch pharmacies” writes Gruber. “But I do know that CurrentC is unlikely to ever gain any traction whatsoever.”

CurrentC is the app MCX developed for use on smartphones. Josh Constine gave it a close look in Techcrunch yesterday and came to the same conclusion Gruber did: It’s a system designed not to make consumers’ lives easier, but to do an end run around the credit card companies.